T. M. Scanlon offers a qualified defense of normative cognitivism--the view that there are irreducibly normative truths about reasons for action. He responds to three familiar objections: that such truths would have troubling metaphysical implications; that we would have no way of knowing what they are; and that the role of reasons in motivating and explaining action could not be explained if accepting a conclusion about reasons for action were a kind of belief. Scanlon answers the first of these objections within a general account of ontological commitment, applying to mathematics as well as normative judgments. He argues that the method of reflective equilibrium, properly understood, provides an adequate account of how we come to know both normative truths and mathematical truths, and that the idea of a rational agent explains the link between an agent's normative beliefs and his or her actions. Whether every statement about reasons for action has a determinate truth value is a question to be answered by an overall account of reasons for action, in normative terms. Since it seems unlikely that there is such an account, the defense of normative cognitivism offered here is qualified: statements about reasons for action can have determinate truth values, but it is not clear that all of them do. Along the way, Scanlon offers an interpretation of the distinction between normative and non-normative claims, a new account of the supervenience of the normative on the non-normative, an interpretation of the idea of the relative strength of reasons, and a defense of the method of reflective equilibrium.

Rescuing Ivan Ilych – Conceptual issues related to ending life – Problems with "assisted suicide – Four-step arguments for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia – Some arguments by Velleman concerning suicide and assisted suicide – Brody on active and passive euthanasia – A note on dementia and advance directives – Brain death and spontaneous breathing – Using human embryos for biomedical research – Ethical issues in using and not using human embryonic stem cells – Ronald Dworkin's views on abortion – Creation and abortion short – McMahan on the ethics of killing at the margins of life – Some conceptual and ethical issues in Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy – Genes, justice, and obligations to future people – Moral status, personal Identity, and substitutability – What is and is not wrong with enhancement? – Health and equity – Health and equality of opportunity – Is it morally permissible to discontinue nontutile use of a scarce resource? – Aggregation, allocating scarce resources, and discrimination against the disabled – Rationing and the disabled – Learning from bioethics – The philosopher as insider and outsider – Theory and analogy in law and philosophy – Types of relations between theory and practice – Understanding, justifying, and finding oneself.

Making war and its continuation unjust – Conduct in war : justifications for killing noncombatants in war – Conduct in war : failures of just war theory – Conduct in war : the morality of killing in war – Collaboration and with the enemy : harming some to save others from the Nazis – Post conflict : moral improvisation and new obligations – Post conflict : jus post bello, proportionality, and rehabilitation – Terrorism and several moral distinctions – Self defense, resistance, and suicide : the Taliban women – Nuclear deterrence and noncombatants.

“What constitutes human excellence?” and “What is the best way to live a life?” These are questions that human beings have been asking since the beginning of time. In their critically acclaimed book, All Things Shining, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly argue that our search for meaning was once fulfilled by our responsiveness to forces greater than ourselves, whether one God or many. These forces drew us in and imbued the ordinary moments of life with wonder and gratitude. Dreyfus and Kelly argue in this thought-provoking work that as we began to rely on the power of our own independent will we lost our skill for encountering the sacred.
Through their original and transformative discussion of some of the greatest works of Western literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to Melville’s Moby Dick, Dreyfus and Kelly reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with the things that gave our lives purpose, and show how, by reading our culture’s classics anew, we can once again be drawn into intense involvement with the wonder and beauty of the world.

Philosophy of art is traditionally concerned with the definition, appreciation and value of art. Through a close examination of art from recent centuries, Art and Phenomenology is one of the first books to explore visual art as a mode of experiencing the word itself, showing how, in the words of Merleau-Ponty, "Painting does not imitate the world, but is a world of its own". Including an extensive selection of full colour reproductions, Art and Phenomenology is essential reading for anyone interested in Phenomenology, aesthetics, and visual culture.

Agency and identity – Necessitation – Acts and actions – Aristotle and Kant – Agency and practical identity – The metaphysics of normativity – Constitutive standards – The constitution of life – In defense of teleology – The paradox of self-constitution – Formal and substantive principles of reason – Formal versus substantive – Testing versus weighing – Maximizing and prudence – Practical reason and the unity of the will – The empiricist account of normativity – The rationalist account of normativity – Kant on the hypothetical imperative – Against particularistic willing – Deciding and predicting – Autonomy and efficacy – The function of action – The possibility of agency – Non-rational action – Action – Attribution – The psychology of action – Expulsion from the garden : the transition to humanity – Instinct, emotion, intelligence, and reason – The parts of the soul – Inside or outside – Pull yourself together – The constitutional model – Models of the soul – The city and the soul – Platonic virtues – Justice : substantive, procedural, and platonic – Kant and the constitutional model – Defective action – The problem of bad action – Being governed by the wrong law – Or five bad constitutions – Conceptions of evil – Degrees of action – Integrity and interaction – Deciding to be bad – The ordinary cases – Dealing with the disunified – Kant's theory of interaction – My reasons – Deciding to treat someone as an end in himself – Interacting with yourself – How to be a person – What's left of me?

Introduction: An approach to justice – The demands of justice. – Reason and objectivity – Rawls and beyond – Institutions and persons – Voice and social choice – Impartiality and objectivity – Closed and open impartiality – Forms of reasoning. – Position, relevance and illusion – Rationality and other people – Plurality of impartial reasons – Realizations, consequences and agency – The materials of justice. – Lives, freedoms and capabilities – Capabilities and resources – Happiness, well-being and capabilities – Equality and liberty – Public reasoning and democracy. – Democracy as public reason – The practice of democracy – Human rights and global imperatives – Justice and the world.; Presents an analysis of what justice is, the transcendental theory of justice and its drawbacks, and a persuasive argument for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives.

The illusory appeal of double effect – The significance of intent – Means and ends – Blame.; "In a clear and elegant style, T. M. Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Permissibility may seem to depend on the agent's reasons for performing an action. There seems to be an important moral difference, for example, between tactical bombing and a campaign by terrorists - even if the same number of noncombatants are killed - and this difference may seem to lie in the agents' respective aims. Scanlon argues, however, that the apparent dependence of permissibility on the agent's reasons in such cases is merely a failure to distinguish between two kinds of moral assessment: assessment of the permissibility of an action and assessment of the way an agent decided what to do." "The meaning of an action depends on the agent's reasons for performing it, in a way that its permissibility does not. Blame, he argues, is a response to the meaning of an action rather than to its permissibility. This analysis leads to a novel account of the conditions of moral responsibility and to important conclusions about the ethics of blame."–BOOK JACKET.

Epithets and attitudes – When truth gives out – What the emotivists should have said – What's the matter with relativism? – Matters of taste – Appendix 1 : what can be said? – Appendix 2 : relativism and contextualism about knowledge.

Nonconsequentialism – Aggregation and two moral methods – Intention, harm, and the possibility of a unified theory – The doctrines of double and triple effect and why a rational agent need not intend the means to his end – Toward the essence of nonconsequentialist constraints on harming : modality, productive purity, and the greater good working itself out – Harming people in Peter Unger's Living high and letting die – Moral status – Rights beyond interests – Conflicts of rights : a typology – Responsibility and collaboration – Does distance matter morally to the duty to rescue? – The new problem of distance in morality – Peter Singer's ethical theory – Moral intuitions, cognitive psychology, and the harming/not-aiding distinction – Harms, losses, and evils in Gert's moral theory – Owing, justifying, and rejecting.

The argumentative Indian – Inequality, instability, and voice – India: large and small – The diaspora and the world – Tagore and his India – Our culture–their culture – Indian traditions and the Western imagination – China and India – Tryst with destiny – Class in India – Women and men – India and the bomb – The reach of reason – Secularism and its discontents – India through its calendars – The Indian identity.; Voice and heterodoxy – Culture and communication – Politics and protest – Reason and identity.